


This Is The Story of How I Died

by sapphicalexandra



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Doctor Who Fusion, Angst, M/M, Parallel Universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 04:35:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12787080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicalexandra/pseuds/sapphicalexandra
Summary: The Doctor (Alec) and his companion (Jace) must close a gap between two parallel universes, and rid the world of the Daleks and Cybermen as a result. But fate has bigger plans for them.AKA Doctor Who, s02e13 'Doomsday'. Jalec version.





	This Is The Story of How I Died

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday to @darebearrph on tumblr! I don't know whether to hate you or love you for this prompt, cause yes! Tenrose as Jalec? Perfect match! But the feels, man...  
> Basically, you know who to blame for this angst fest ;)

The breach was finally open, and Dalek after Cyberman after Dalek were being sucked right into it.

Alec, for as long as he had been the Doctor, had known that celebrating victory before due time could only end up in crushing disappointment…and yet, this time he truly felt that they had _done_ it.

As him and Jace held on for dear life onto their magnetic clamps, everything was about to be over so very _soon_. And they could go back to their adventures in all of space and time.

The Doctor and Jace Herondale, together, in the Tardis. As it should be.

…Of course, of _course_ , fate had other plans for them.

One of the levers that kept the breach open had shifted from its place; the portal would close before they had gotten rid of all their enemies!

Jace, oh Jace, brave, brilliant Jace, he leapt from the safety of his hold, managing to grab the lever and struggling to put it back in place at the same time that the force of the pull from the breach was so _strong_. Alec could only watch him with widened eyes, his two hearts pumping with a staccato beat that had nothing graceful about it, as he hoped, prayed to a higher being that he knew didn’t exist, for his companion to succeed. For things to work in his favor, for once!

Jace _did_ it, the lever was back in its place, the breach would remain until it had enclosed every last…

Alec’s arms twitched around his hold, as his eyes almost popped out of his head, because Jace’s fingers were _slipping_.

“JACE! HOLD ON!!” he shouted, desperately, over the noise of the magnetic force.

Had he ever been more desperate in his life? He must’ve been, right, but…

Sounds of strain and fatigue were coming out of Jace as he fought against the pull drawing him towards certain death.

“HOLD ON!” Alec could only repeat.

His and Jace’s eyes met amidst the madness, and time seemed to slow down. Jace – the first face this face saw, his companion, his lover, his _everything_ …

A shout had built deep in him even before Alec saw Jace lose his hold, but when it came _out_ , it was like never before, his throat burning around it, as Jace’s own scream mirrored his own…

“NOOOOO!”

It was over, he had killed another one, Jace was going to be stuck in the Void forever, and Alec was never going to see him again!

A dark figure appeared. Stephen Herondale, as alive as he was in the parallel universe they had visited, was right in front of the breach, and he grabbed Jace a split second before he teleported them both away. As soon as they had vanished, Alec’s scream finished its course just as the last Dalek was pulled in, and the breach closed after it. Forever.

Jace was alive. He’d live a full life, with a bit of luck.

Alec should feel at least partially _happy_ , as he slumped down on the ground, completely spent. But he felt only…empty.

Entirely, utterly _void_.

Alec got up, his movements slow, as if he had no energy to do more, and he approached the white wall. It was _just_ a simple white wall…but it hid behind it everything that he had lost. Alec pressed a hand, then his face against it, listening in to nothing that he could ever hear.

The Doctor and Jace Herondale, together, in the Tardis, was no more.

* * *

 

“TAKE ME BACK! TAKE ME BACK! TAKE ME BACK!”

Jace was reduced to those three words, as he pounded against a plain white wall and screamed his lungs out. Tears were running down his face, but he was past the point of caring…about _anything_.

“It's stopped working. He did it. He closed the breach,” Jace heard his father say behind him, and that only twisted the knife in his gut.

“No!” he sobbed, leaning his forehead against the wall, as his entire body shook and crumbled in of itself.

The last year had been the best of his life. He had seen wonders, he had _done_ wonders, he had met the most wonderfully crazy man in the whole universe, who had opened Jace’s eyes to a whole new world of possibilities!

It could not be over...it could _not_ …

Jace couldn’t breathe, as he pressed his hands against the wall, and then his head. Listening intently, as if he could actually _hear_ the other world that was behind it.

But there was nothing. Nothing at all.

It wasn’t over, though…not yet.

 _Jace_.

He _dreamed_ of a voice, night after night, calling his name. His father, mother, and Clary couldn’t help but listen to him, because they had met the Doctor. They all knew it _meant_ something, so they listened to the dream, and followed the voice.

They drove and drove, until they crossed water, then they kept driving, hundreds and hundreds of miles.

Because _he_ was calling.

 _Here I am, at last,_ Jace thought _._

And there he was. Alec. His Doctor. Standing in the middle of a beach in Norway.

“Where are you?” Jace asked him, the sound of his own voice surprising him.

“Inside the Tardis.” But it was nothing like _his_ voice, as Jace finally heard it again. Because it reached not Jace’s ears, but something far deeper than that. “There's one tiny little gap in the universe left, just about to close. And it takes a lot of power to send this projection - I'm in orbit around a supernova. I'm burning up a sun, just to say goodbye.” There was an unmistakable catch behind Alec’s attempt at levity.

And that was, strangely, the most romantic thing Jace had ever heard, or _seen_ done for him. Still, he couldn’t help his own neediness. “You look like a ghost.”

He _couldn’t_ look one last time at him like _that_.

“Hold on.”

Alec pointed his sonic screwdriver forward, at the Tardis’s console for sure, and suddenly he looked _solid_.

Jace stretched a hand forward before he could stop himself, his fingers twitching painfully. “Can I…t-”

“I'm still just an image. No touch,” Alec said back, as reluctant to spell it out as Jace was to hear it.

At least, Alec was staring at him fixedly, with his big, deep, sad eyes drinking him in, just as Jace was doing to him.

“Can't you come through properly?” Jace _begged_.

“The whole thing would fracture. Two universes would collapse.”

“So?” Jace broke out into a laugh between the tears that, cursedly, were already pooling in his eyes, and Alec did that, too.

But Jace knew that they were both serious. What were two universes collapsing…to _this_? To _them_?

Alec shrugged himself off; Jace knew that he was forcing himself to act casual, to change the subject. They, after all, had never _done_ this. They had never laid out in the open _what_ they were to each other, and what each of them thought the other to be, or _felt_ for him.  

“Where are we? Where did the gap come out?” Alec asked.

“We're in Norway,” Jace responded, almost toneless.  

“Norway! Right.” Alec’s chirpiness was almost successful. Almost.

“About 50 miles out of Bergen,” Jace went on, never taking his eyes off Alec. “It's called Darlig Ulv Stranden.”

“Dalek?” Alec shot back, confused.

“Darlig,” Jace clarified. “It's Norwegian for bad.” A new shaken kind of laugh came out of Jace. “This translates as _Bad Wolf Bay_.”

Alec’s eyes widened, before his surprise turned into another laugh, too. And Jace knew that the _true_ irony wasn’t lost on either of them; this had always been their destiny. _Everything_ had led them to end up on two different sides of the universe.

Jace felt the first tears slide down his cheeks. “How long have we got?” he croaked out.

Alec’s neck bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “About two minutes.”

They kept staring, just staring, as the clock ticked, and their time together slipped from their fingers. Jace brought a hand to rub his eyes.

“I can't think of…what to say,” Jace admitted brokenly.

Alec smiled his kind smile, and Jace could swear his lower lip was wobbling. He averted his eyes, though, and looked behind Jace, at the people waiting for him there. “You've still got Miss Clary, then.”

Jace nodded lightly. “There's five of us now - Mum, Dad, Clary…and the baby.”

Jace knew that that was petty of him, but he still couldn’t help but want to _see_ what Alec’s reaction would be.

It didn’t disappoint. Alec paused for a long moment, his eyebrows shooting up to his hairline, clearly taken aback. “Is Clary...?”

Jace snorted, satisfied by the clear jealousy he could hear in Alec’s tone. He just wanted…to be remembered, to be held dear for a while longer after everything was said and done, was that too much to ask? “ _No_. It's Mum. She's three months gone. More Herondales on the way.”

Alec’s shoulders visibly sagged in relief, and Jace’s heart rose even more.

“And what about you, what are you…?” Alec was still deflecting, and Jace chose to indulge him a little more.

“Yeah, I'm back working in the shop.”

“Oh, good for you,” Alec said.

Jace rolled his eyes. “Shut up! Nah, I'm not. The Torchwood on this planet's still open for business. I think I know a thing or two about aliens.”

He smirked, and was pleased to see the same expression mirrored on Alec’s face.

“Jace Herondale. Defender of the Earth,” Alec stated, the pride he could hear in his voice warming something inside of Jace…only for one moment, until the next words, “You're dead, officially, back home. So many people died that day, and you've gone missing. You're on a list of the dead.”

Jace nodded, lowering his eyes to the ground.

“Yet here you are.” Jace’s bleary eyes shot back up, and Alec’s face was nothing short of a shiny vision. How could…how _would_ he let go? “Living a life, day after day. The one adventure I can never have.”

“Am I ever going to see you again?” Jace finally blurted out, giving up on any pretense as his chest was now fully shaken with sobs that he couldn’t keep in.

Alec’s smile was fond, but so deeply sad. “You can't.”

“What are you going to _do_?”

“I've got the Tardis. Same old life. Last of the Time Lords.”

That thought alone was enough to dig a giant whole in Jace’s chest. He thought he could see the same happening in Alec. “On your _own_?”

Alec nodded mutely.

That was it. Their last moments. Fading away one after the other. It was now, or never.

“I-” Jace’s voice didn’t know how to come out of him anymore, and he had to force it. Not because he didn’t want to say it…but because he doubted any other words had ever been more important. “ _I love you_.”

And there they were. Out in the open. Jace kept trying to swallow down his tears, as everything crumbled down all around him. Alec was the _only_ real thing he would ever feel, and Jace loved him. There was no other truth.

Jace thought he could almost see tears in Alec’s eyes, too, as his mouth opened up in one last smile.

“Quite right, too,” Alec said, his voice low and hoarse.

Jace’s heart was thumping wildly in his chest.

“And I suppose...” Alec continued.

Jace didn’t think he was breathing.

 “If it's my last chance to say it…”

Jace knew it already, yes, but he didn’t think that he could ever live another day having never _heard_ those words coming from _that_ mouth, in _that_ voice that had become as familiar as his own, and directed at _him_ and only him. He _needed_ that confirmation of everything that he – _they_ – had been feeling for so long.

“Jace Herondale, -”

Alec vanished.

One blink of an eye, and he wasn’t there anymore.

Jace stared at empty space.


End file.
